Woodpecker Control

I own several office buildings in and around this area, and I’ve noticed that one of my buildings needs some woodpecker control.

In my line of work, my office gets calls all the time for various building maintenance needs. Office managers, company owners or even employees of the companies that rent various office space from me will call about anything from a leaky toilet to a malfunctioning light switch. I get complaints that their customers don’t like the heaviness of the doors, or employees are too hot in the afternoon, or the sprinkler system for the landscaping isn’t working properly. Some of these calls are silly nonsense, most of them are minor and easily handled, but some are pretty major.

When three different tenants from one of my buildings called, I paid attention. One of my top-floor tenants had a few employees complaining about tapping and noises coming from the wall. Another tenant said he’d noticed a woodpecker clutching the side of the building and “going to town” on the stucco. Another tenant mentioned the ugly holes that had started appearing on the side of the building.

I went there myself to investigate, and sure enough, we needed woodpecker control. From the front of the building, I could easily see a few holes in the stucco, and some of them had large red streaks of woodpecker droppings staining the façade. Around the side of the building, I saw a much larger, gaping hole close to the roof. I couldn’t believe it. It was large enough that a medium-sized dog could crawl through it into the building . . . of course, the dog would have to crawl up the side of the three-story building to get there, but you know what I mean. I heard raccoons can easily get up to the roof of a building, and wondered if we had raccoon problems in addition to the woodpecker.

But, one thing at a time. I whipped out my cell phone and got my secretary on the line. I told him he needed to get a really good woodpecker control service out to this office building, and to make sure it was a service that would get rid of the woodpeckers, clean up the mess, repair the holes, and look for signs of raccoons while they were at it.

Within fifteen minutes, I got a call back from my secretary telling me that he got Allstate Animal Control to send someone out and inspect the damage and give us a quote. I went inside the building and talked with the owners of the companies renting space from me. I reassured them that the woodpecker control was, well, under control. Of course, then I had to sit and listen to a laundry-list of other complaints. I’ll take care of the woodpecker control first, and then I’ll worry about the type of flowers planted out front. Sheesh.